Others’ requests may dampen the desire to do good: The effect of requests on children's prosocial motivation across five cultures.

Authors

• Anneliese Skrobanek, University of Münster
• Patricia Kanngiesser, School of Psychology
• Jahnavi Sunderarajan, University of Münster
• Jorge David Mantilla Salgado, Universidad de Otavalo
• Saiwa Sisa Quimbo Yacelga, Universidad de Otavalo
• Shoji Itakura, Doshisha University
• Marie M. Morita, Doshisha University
• Masanori Yamaguchi, Doshisha University
• Nadia Chernyak, University of California at Irvine
• Lucy M. Stowe, University of California at Irvine
• Joscha Kärtner, University of Münster

ORCID

• Patricia Kanngiesser: 0000-0003-1068-3725

Abstract

There exists cultural variation in how people react to prosocial obligations, but we still know little about when these differences emerge in development and how they can be explained. We investigated this in a study with 6- to 11-year-old children (N = 686) in five cultural contexts. Children listened to scenarios about spontaneous and requested (within-subjects) helping and sharing. They rated requested scenarios as less desirable and less satisfying, but there was significant cross-cultural variation in the magnitude of this effect, which was mostly stable with age. We also measured children's sense of individual agency and internalization of prosocial norms as potential explanations. While internalization moderated the effect of requests in helping scenarios at the individual level, neither agency nor norm internalization explained cross-cultural variation in children's judgments of requests. Overall, our findings underline the importance of self-determination for motivation and offer insights into cross-cultural similarities and differences in prosocial motivation.

DOI Link

10.1037/dev0002145

Publication Date

2026-01-29

Publication Title

Developmental Psychology

Volume

62

Issue

5

ISSN

0012-1649

Acceptance Date

2025-11-26

Deposit Date

2026-04-10

Funding

This project was funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Grant KA 3451/7-1, awarded to Joscha Kärtner).

Additional Links

https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105034085894

Keywords

agency, culture, internalization, obligation, prosocial

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

First Page

960

Last Page

972

Recommended Citation

Skrobanek, A., Kanngiesser, P., Sunderarajan, J., Mantilla Salgado, J., Quimbo Yacelga, S., Itakura, S., Morita, M., Yamaguchi, M., Chernyak, N., Stowe, L., & Kärtner, J. (2026) 'Others’ requests may dampen the desire to do good: The effect of requests on children's prosocial motivation across five cultures.', Developmental Psychology, 62(5), pp. 960-972. Available at: 10.1037/dev0002145